1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display device having a variant-shaped panel such as substantially an elliptical or circular shape, in which a peripheral region of a liquid crystal display panel is covered with a shield layer.
2. Description of the Background Art
Liquid crystal display devices are widely used as display devices for various kinds of equipments such as personal computers, OA equipments, and TV sets because the display devices have many advantages such as lightness, compactness and low power consumption. In recent years, the liquid crystal display device has also been used in mobile terminal equipments such as a mobile phone, a car navigation device, a game player, and a meter panel for automobiles.
Accordingly, a variety of panel shapes corresponding to applications such as a circular or an elliptical shape, but not limited to a conventional rectangular shape have been desired. For example, Japanese laid open patent application NO. P2006-276359 discloses a liquid crystal display device having a display panel formed in a substantially circular or elliptical shape, in which corner portions of respective array and color filter substrates that have a vertical long and rectangular shape, are cut down close to a display area to save display space.
On the other hand, in a color liquid crystal display device composed of pixels, each pixel includes, for example, red, green and blue sub-pixels. When a part of the sub-pixels composing the pixels is shielded by a housing, for example, a displayed color of the pixels may be off-balanced, which may result in a color display different from a predetermined one. For example, when only a part of the red sub-pixel is shielded, a transmittance or a reflection of the red color is reduced, which results in a difficulty of display color balance. In order to suppress such color shift, one proposal is to shield all the sub-pixels covered with a shield layer such as a black matrix layer. However, this has a drawback that the active area is reduced by the shield. Further, since edges of the active area are formed of dot patterns, smoothness of the edges of the active area in the circular or elliptical shape becomes impaired, which results in a bad image display.